TransCanada west-east pipeline proposal puts Oliver in a good mood

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver was in a good mood Tuesday morning, thanks to TransCanada. The pipeline company announced that it’s open to hearing from interested parties “for a pipeline to transport crude oil from Western Canada to Eastern Canadian markets.”

“That is encouraging news for Canadian families and communities,” Oliver told reporters gathered in the House of Commons foyer in Centre Block. “Subject to regulatory approval, it represents a positive step in advancing our government’s priority to construct energy infrastructure that would transport Canadian oil from the west to the east.”

According to TransCanada, the potential project, which would involve converting the natural gas pipeline capacity of its 3,000km-long existing Canadian Mainline, to be able to handle crude oil. It would also add roughly 1,400km of new pipeline, potentially allowing it to carry up to 850,000 barrels of crude every day.

The government’s promotion of a west-east pipeline also happens to jive with a message the Opposition leader Thomas Mulcair has been trumpeting for the last few months, including during his latest visit to Washington, D.C. last month. He told a crowd there that one of his first priorities should he become prime minister in 2015 would be to move petroleum west to east. He called it a “win-win-win” for Canada.

To Oliver, that was nothing more than jumping on a train that already left the station.

Mulcair, he said Tuesday, “has jumped on the bandwagon” of a west-east pipeline, but at the same time has “undermines the proposal of making it a reality,” thanks to the laundry list of anti-development charges the government normally levels at the New Democrat leader: that he wants a carbon tax and that he speculated Canada was suffering from ‘Dutch disease.’

In short, even when the government and Opposition agree, they disagree.

And the TransCanada announcement gives them plenty of time to continue bickering.

“Following the completion of the open season, if it is successful, TransCanada intends to proceed with the necessary regulatory applications for approvals to construct and operate the required facilities, with a potential in-service date of 2017,” the company said Tuesday.

NDP natural resource critic Peter Julian agreed Tuesday that a west-east pipeline scenario is favourable in principle, specifically based on the potential to create “value-added” jobs in the refining sector in Eastern Canada and reduce the country’s reliance on more expensive Middle Eastern oil.

But, he said, the NDP differs with the government when it comes to the environmental assessments that would need to be in place before approving any pipelines.

“We need to restore and put in place strong environmental assessment legislation, we need to have in place serious public consultations… and we need in place the type of principles around regulations for the oil sector,” he told iPolitics.

“The issues that we see is given what the Harper government did last year to environmental assessments and public consultation, there’s very clearly things that need to change,” he said.

Oliver also fielded questions Tuesday about the oil spill in Arkansas, where an Exxon pipeline ruptured, flooding a suburban neighbourhood with 12,000 or so barrels of oil and water. (Exxon hasn’t said yet how much of each was in the mixture.) He said the accident needs to be put in perspective.

“A very old, more than 60 year-old U.S. pipeline had a leak. It happened to be carrying Canadian crude. The fact that it was carrying Canadian crude did not have any impact on the leak,” Oliver said. We know from science that Canadian crude is not more corrosive than light crude.”

He said the spill was “regrettable” but since so many U.S. pipelines carry Canadian crude, if there are accidents, “there could be Canadian oil implicated.”